Electronic documents are utilized to record, display and transfer information. Such documents can include word processing files, graphical images, spreadsheets, and electronic mail messages. In a conventional network environment, an electronic document can be printed by selecting a print driver from a list of available print drivers within an application used to generate the document. The document is then transmitted to the print device corresponding to the print driver. A digital front end (DFE) application receives and processes information from the driver to print the electronic document.
The generation of a page containing text and image data frequently starts at a terminal where a user generates a computer generated graphic or receives a contone image from a scanner. Document image and text are converted into a highly compressed form using a page description language (PDL), which is sent to a print device server, the DFE, which is usually located somewhere near the print device. The DFE decomposes the PDL and sends a number of separations of byte maps (e.g., cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) of contone video to one or more interface cards via a suitable protocol employed by the DFE. The PDL is expanded into separations of bit maps, wherein the resultant data is sent to the print device. Finally, the print device has an interface card which reformats the data into rasters, halftones them in a rendering card, and applies them to the raster output scanner (ROS) for printing.
Electronic documents can be printed either with a plurality of colors or a single color. In one example, a print job includes almost exclusively black content (e.g., text) with a small portion in color (e.g., a cut mark). Since the job contains a minimal quantity of color, it is treated as a color document. Accordingly, a plurality of colors are used to create the black text and the cut mark. Such a result is undesirable since color printing is many times more costly than printing in monochrome. This is especially true when the monochrome color is black (K).
What are needed are systems and methods to selectively force a print job to be printed in a single color when desired.